Page 35 of Wicked Tides
“Did you expect anything less?”
“It makes no difference. I have waited a long time to get my hands on you, Vidar. Do you think I haven’t been suffering hemsbane all these years? Your body could be filled with it and I could still devour you before it took effect. I told you I would not forget your name.”
I scoffed. “I never expected you to. But after eighteen years, cutting me up in pieces is the best you came up with?”
She shrugged. “I never desired to be creative with my vengeance.” Her blade made a quick pass over my chest again, making a parallel cut. That one was a bit deeper and the suddenness of it made me hiss. “I only wish to be rid of you.”
Under the moon’s muted light, I could hardly tell, but I thought I could see a slight glisten beneath her inhuman eyes.
But sirens couldn’t weep. Weeping was for people with hearts and sirens were hollow. I knew that all too well.
“Well,” I sighed, lifting my hips to remind her where she sat. “Better get on with it. If I’m to be buried under high tide, you’ll want to start.”
My lack of distress seemed to make her tense. I couldn’t help myself. I smirked at knowing what she wanted. She wanted my fear. She wanted me to plead for my life. Killing me wasn’t enough. She wanted me to feel it and the fact was, I hardly felt anything anymore. And the other fact was that my truest fear was that she would take out her vengeance on my crew instead of me. But she’d taken me and I was oddly relieved about it. Another thought that made me smile.
She hated it. She snarled and stood from my lap, looking over my body as if searching for a place to start. She was going to draw it out… if her anger didn’t get the best of her. Maybe if I made her lose control, I could get things over with and be done with the whole damn game.
The wet slap of something solid hitting the rocks drew her attention.
Another siren slid from the waves, her body moon-white and almost glowing in the darkness. Silver hair hung over her shoulders and freckles of glowing marks littered her face and the contours of her body. I’d only seen a few like her and never had I left them alive long enough to truly see how their skin glowed like that. Sirens could have been considered beautiful to the untrained eye.
She spoke in a tongue I couldn’t understand. Not fully, anyway. Over the years, I’d picked up things here and there. I noticed “ship” and that was the only clue I needed to know they were talking about the Rose.
The pale one’s eyes caught mine, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking when there was no color in them. They were just luminescent, white globes that were almost too big for her slender face.
“Your ship’s heading west,” my little demon said. “Away from here.”
Good, I thought.
“Well,” I said, adjusting myself as if to get comfortable, but in truth, my ass was going numb and I couldn’t really feel my hands anymore. “Torture me how you like. You know how to do it, don’t you? Seeing as you’re Reyna’s daughter.”
The pale one furrowed her brows, but my demon? Oh, she looked livid. Her nostrils flared and her fingers curled ever tighter around the hilt of her blade. She was not going to be difficult to anger.
“Come, now,” I continued. “You should be ashamed.” My tone dropped an octave. “With a lineage like that, I expected more.”
For days. For days I listened to the morbid symphony of my father’s crew dying. Being eaten. Dismembered. Skinned.
But she didn’t care. It was in her nature. She had said it herself all those years ago.
“I wish I was so skilled,” I finished.
She lunged forward, grabbing a handful of my hair in her fist and yanking my head back so my throat was exposed to her. The cool edge of her knife kissed my skin and I almost rejoiced at how easy it was to hasten my end.
“Your blood will fill my belly,” she snarled. “Your skin will clothe my body.”
“Dahlia,” the other one said.
I finally had a name.
Dahlia.
My demon had a name.
She pressed the blade under my chin until I felt my skin give and warm blood pool, but she didn’t cut. Not yet.
“I will spill your insides at my feet for the ocean to sweep away. The world will forget your name,Vidar.”
“Do it already,” I strained. “Or are you too weak to murder your mother’s killer? I know I wasn’t too weak to kill my father’s.”
